Using Time Tracking in QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks allows you track employee hours. There are two options: You can either enter time using a weekly timesheet or enter a single activity. While this requires manual entry, it is a good way to start the time tracking process for free. However, if you have lots of employees, I will recommend integrating an app into QBO so employees can enter their time directly into QuickBooks. This eliminates the manual process of having to manually type in payroll data.

If you require employees to manually track their time, I will recommend using a shared spreadsheet to do this rather than paper time sheets.

Adding time with the weekly time sheet

Log into QuickBooks Online. On the top menu, Click the + sign.

This will open up the menu below. Under employees choose the weekly time sheet.

This opens up the worksheet below. On the top, choose the employee you entering the time for and choose the week the time sheet applies to.

Enter the payroll details. If you want to do job costing be sure to:

Enter the customer who the job was done for.

Enter the job done and click billable if you want the option to charge the time to the customer.

Enter the number of hours the employee worked each day of the week.

If you have another employee to enter, click “Save and new” Or click “Save and close” if done. You can toggle between both by clicking the down arrow on the side.

Entering a Single Time Activity

Entering the time weekly is much faster when you are batch processing. However, if you enter time on a daily basis, you can use to use the “Single Time Activity’ function.

To access the “Single Time Activity” Function, close the weekly time sheet if it is still open and click the plus sign again. This time choose “Single Time Activity”.

This opens up the screen below. Enter the:

Employee name.

You can choose to enter total number of hours or start and end time.

To enter start and end time, check the “Enter Start and End Time” at the end of the screen.

If not, you will be given the option to only enter total hours

Enter the customer the job was done for

The service done for the customer

You can also enter any further description in the description field

Click “Save and new” if you have another employee to enter

Click “Save and close” if done.

You can switch between both options by clicking the down arrow on the side.

That sums up how you can manually enter time in QBO using the time tracking function. Keep in mind that as your business grows you should look at buying an app to automate this process.